Adventure Archives - Page 21 of 41

The Princess and the Frog (2009)

December 11, 20092000s, 2009, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Disney, Family, Fantasy, Musical, Romance, Theatrical

*½/****
screenplay by Ron Clements & John Musker & Rob Edwards
directed by Ron Clements & John Musker

by Ian Pugh Disney has resurrected its traditional (i.e., 2-D) animation department only to plunder plots and themes from its own vault, but because we’re all familiar with what Disney represents in this day and age, we’re meant to accept it with a wink and a nod. This is the same old Cinderella trope located firmly within the “Family Guy” generation, the film’s hip acknowledgment of genre conventions (the absurdity of talking animals, the modern irrelevance of royalty) nevertheless failing to capitalize on that newfound consciousness in any meaningful way. So while it offers the reasonable assertion that the importance of love and family shouldn’t be lost in the pursuit of a dream, it still ends with a message of no-happiness-without-marriage straight outta the 16^th century. And whatever PR folderol you’ve read about The Princess and the Frog representing the company’s “first black princess,” be aware that Bold Leaps Forward are hardly the priority here, the common but wholly-valid criticism being that the characters spend more screentime as frogs than as people.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) – Blu-ray Disc

December 10, 20092000s, 2009, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Family, Fantasy, Mystery, UK

*/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B+
starring Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Jim Broadbent
screenplay by Steve Kloves, based on the novel by J.K. Rowling
directed by David Yates

by Walter Chaw It’s easily worse than Mike Newell’s go at The Goblet of Fire, and it’s satisfying to note that it fails for many of the same reasons. For all the gorgeously-decayed gothic architecture, the German Expressionism, the bleached colour palette, etc., Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (hereafter Harry Potter 6) isn’t the moody requiem before the bloody mass of parts 7 and 7a in the next couple of years, but instead this ungainly tween romcom with a sudden horde of amphibious zombies (not unlike the aquatic sequence in Harry Potter 4), inexplicable cameos from Ursa, Non, and Zod, and silly broomstick rugby. Dark undercurrents? No question. But they’re allowed to wither as the film focuses its attention on three non-professional actors doing their best to transform ridiculous, sweet-sixteen romantic imbroglios into Chekhov and Shakespeare, with the combined might of what seems the entire pantheon of great modern British movie actors milling around behind them. The problem isn’t that the film is character-driven; the problem is that the characters’ problems are insipid. Gone is the intense, sticky, stunningly emotional father issues tackled by Alfonso Cuarón’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban–the first real hint that this series could become the grown-up artifact the books never quite will given their much-publicized “meh” denouement. Gone is the continuation of that unsolvable Oedipal complexity that arose when the father figures were revealed as less than godlike in Yates’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (the best film of the series by a nose–and one of the best American films of that year). In their place is a lot of insufferable slapstick carried off by actors no one would assume capable of screwball in environments better suited to Hammer. horrors: it’s “Abbott & Costello Meet the Dementors.”

Brothers (2009) + Everybody’s Fine (2009)

December 9, 20092000s, 2009, Action, Adventure, Authors: Ian Pugh, Drama, Road Movie, Robert De Niro, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller, War

BROTHERS
***/****
starring Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman, Mare Winningham
screenplay by David Benioff, based on the motion picture Brødre by Susanne Bier
directed by Jim Sheridan

EVERYBODY’S FINE
*/****
starring Robert De Niro, Drew Barrymore, Kate Beckinsale, Sam Rockwell
screenplay by Kirk Jones, based on an earlier screenplay by Massimo De Rita & Tonio Guerra & Giuseppe Tornatore
directed by Kirk Jones

by Ian Pugh If you’re feeling charitable towards Susanne Bier’s Brødre, you’ll probably consider Jim Sheridan’s Brothers an extraordinarily faithful remake–one that follows the original recipe so closely it could be considered a step-by-step recreation. But a quick survey of what screenwriter David Benioff excised and expanded reveals that he wasn’t merely a glorified script doctor, having squeezed some real pathos from a tactless source. It’s still the story of a loving father, Sam (Tobey Maguire), who is forced to perform unspeakable acts as a POW in Afghanistan. Because Sam’s presumed dead, his ex-con brother Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal, finding the perfect balance between guilt and innocence) straightens out his life and grows ever closer to Sam’s wife (Natalie Portman) and children. Sam’s sudden reappearance in their lives is further complicated by the onset of the soldier’s post-traumatic stress, but gone are the heavy-handed lines about the nature of good, evil, and death from Bier’s film. In their place, moments of shaky acceptance as new members are integrated into a family–followed by stares of betrayal as loved ones become interlopers in their own home.

The Bad Lieutenant – Port of Call: New Orleans (2009); Planet 51 (2009); Me and Orson Welles (2009)

November 26, 2009****/****, 2000s, 2009, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Crime, Directors: Richard Linklater, Directors: Werner Herzog, Drama, Family, Nicolas Cage, Sci-Fi, Theatrical

THE BAD LIEUTENANT – PORT OF CALL: NEW ORLEANS
****/****
starring Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer, Alvin “Xzibit” Joiner
screenplay by William Finkelstein, based on the film by Abel Ferrara
directed by Werner Herzog

PLANET 51
*/****
screenplay by Joe Stillman
directed by Jorge Blanco, Javier Abad & Marcos Martinez

ME AND ORSON WELLES
**/****
starring Claire Danes, Zac Efron, Christian McKay, Zoë Kazan
screenplay by Holly Gent Palmo & Vincent Palmo, based on the book by Robert Kaplow
directed by Richard Linklater

by Ian Pugh Playing against his sadistic instincts, police sergeant Terrence McDonagh (Nicolas Cage) saves a man from drowning in a flooded prison during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, earning him not only a promotion to lieutenant but also a debilitating spinal injury. A subsequent addiction to prescription painkillers inevitably leads McDonagh to harder drugs and casual abuses of his newfound power as he attempts to solve the murder of a Senegalese drug dealer and his family. Trading Abel Ferrara’s sulphuric New York for a no-less-hellish Louisiana noir, Werner Herzog’s in-name-only remake of Bad Lieutenant is a work of delirious madness. That should come as no surprise from the man who’s spent the last forty years cataloguing human obsession, but I don’t think I’d ever really understood the method behind it until The Bad Lieutenant – Port of Call: New Orleans (hereafter Bad Lieutenant 2). Madness is about possibility, and what better complement to that philosophy than Nicolas Cage, an actor who–at his best, like Herzog–apparently regards the conventions and boundaries of his craft as simple suggestions that must be defied? A quick look at what they’re capable of accomplishing together and you’re a little surprised they haven’t teamed up before. As McDonagh, Cage projects the dangerous unpredictability of Kinski^* and the sympathetic brutality of Bruno S.: you don’t fear him, exactly, but you’re afraid of what he might become; you don’t feel sorry for him, but you lament what he could have been. (“I’ll kill ‘im,” he says at one point, the frightening indifference in his voice leaving uncertain if–or how–he plans to act on that idle threat.) Halfway through the film, after the stakes in play are thoroughly established, Cage/McDonagh suddenly adopts a muted, cotton-mouthed accent. Why?

The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009)

November 20, 20092000s, 2009, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Romance, Teen, Theatrical, Vampire, Werewolf, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Dakota Fanning
screenplay by Melissa Rosenberg, based on the novel by Stephenie Meyer
directed by Chris Weitz

by Walter Chaw Let’s play a Mad Libs game with Chris Weitz’s appalling The Twilight Saga: New Moon (hereafter New Moon) and, by so doing, avoid talking about how a new moon is actually the absence of a moon in the sky, or how moon cycles remind me of menstruation, which would be a terrible thing to happen to heroine Bella (Kristen Stewart) around her boyfriend Ed (Robert Pattinson). Let’s replace every time they say “do it”–and by that they mean “bite me and make me a member of the walking undead”–with “fuck” and see if this whole Twilight atrocity still appears the benign thing for your daughters to gobble up whole. When Bella implores Ed to fuck her after she graduates from high school, for instance, and Ed says that he won’t fuck her until she turns twenty-one and they can get married…well, listen, this is a fairytale without any teeth, meaning it’s a really, really dangerous fairytale. More, it’s illiterate, invasive, moronic proselytizing from some Mormon housewife’s blinkered belief system. Unconvinced? Consider that it’s stated early on in this instalment of the saga that the reason Ed doesn’t want to turn Bella into a vampire–oops, I mean, fuck her–is that he’s afraid he’ll damn her soul to eternal hellfire.

Up (2009) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

November 19, 20092000s, 2009, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Pixar

***/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras N/A
screenplay by Bob Peterson
directed by Pete Docter

by Walter Chaw There’s still something breathless about Up, but I wonder if the Pixar formula isn’t starting to show its seams now in its second decade of producing masterpieces–if there’s a lack of freshness here in its familiarly exhilarated, cozily excited spaces. None of that fatigue is in evidence in the film’s miraculous, wordless prologue, however: destined to compete with the opening-credits sequence of Watchmen as the single best stretch in any film this year, it establishes character, motivation, story of place, and sense of time without leaving a dry eye in the house. Shame the picture also peaks in these first ten minutes. It reminds of the wordless bit describing Jessie’s abandonment in Toy Story 2, or the entire first half of WALL·E, and it suggests that Pixar is unparalleled in exploiting the possibilities for visual storytelling in its cavernous digital medium. The comparison of WALL·E to Chaplin is on point: When Pixar trusts the expressiveness of its mainframe and the beautiful, liquid clarity of its animation techniques, I don’t know that there’s ever been a better “silent” filmmaking collective. In their roster, it’s arguable that they’ve only really faltered twice: once with the tedious Seven Samurai redux A Bug’s Life, and again with the noxious redneck-baiting Cars. And while Up is nowhere near that bottom, it finds itself somewhere in the middle thanks to the peculiar ceiling to its invention (an entire Lost World and all you got is a giant bird and a talking dog?) and sentimentality that edges from sweet to mawkish. There are one too many cutaways to a dead wife’s portrait and one too many winsome sighs as a plan made in childhood looms tantalizingly near.

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) + The Road (2009)

November 13, 20092000s, 2009, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Directors: Wes Anderson, Drama, Theatrical, Thriller

FANTASTIC MR. FOX
**/****
animated; screenplay by Wes Anderson & Noah Baumbach, based on the book by Roald Dahl
directed by Wes Anderson

THE ROAD
*½/****
starring Viggo Mortensen, Guy Pearce, Robert Duvall, Charlize Theron
screenplay by Joe Penhall, based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy
directed by John Hillcoat

by Walter Chaw There’s nothing much going on in Wes Anderson’s stop-motion adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox–which is a terrible shock, because there’s generally so much going on in Anderson’s and Dahl’s respective canons. With Anderson’s every attempt to infuse this piffle with his brand of Salinger-esque autumnal, familial melancholy registering as ever-so-slightly desperate, it strikes particularly pale in such close proximity to Spike Jonze’s magnificent Where the Wild Things Are. Missing is the vein of emotionality that runs rich in Anderson’s best films, the idiosyncrasies of his misfit family groups somehow rendered ordinary transplanted into foxes and opossums. I wonder if it isn’t something to do with the idea that “cute” animation as a genre and not a medium has “quirk” as its bread and butter. More to the point, it probably has something to do with the fact that for all those charges of “pretentious” Anderson has collected over the course of a career, when you pile all of his pathos into a film that seems mainly interested in being adorable, they’re actually deserved.

North by Northwest (1959) – DVD|North by Northwest (1959) [50th Anniversary Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

November 11, 2009****/****, 1950s, 2009, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Alfred Hitchcock, DVD, Espionage, FFC Must-Own, Mystery

****/****
DVD – Image A Sound B Extras A
BD – Image A+ Sound B+ Extras A
starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Jessie Royce Landis
screenplay by Ernest Lehman
directed by Alfred Hitchcock

by Walter Chaw Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is Alfred Hitchcock’s most mercurial anti-hero, the soup bone reduction of the Master’s wrong-man theme. An advertising executive so at ease with changing his identity at the fall of a hammer, he has, by film’s end, become/done all of the things he’s wrongfully accused of being/doing at the beginning of the film. Indeed, Hitchcock would never again mine the idea of the wrong man with this kind of heat–veering off as he did into a more metaphysical kind of guilt transference à la Vertigo with The Birds, Psycho, and Marnie. As North by Northwest opens, Thornhill gives his regards to a night porter’s wife (“We’re not talkin’!”), steals a cab from a Good Samaritan, and instructs his secretary to send a neglected lover a box of gold-wrapped candy because “she’ll think she’s eating money.” He’s a charmer–and he’s as oily, despicable, and fast-talking as almost every one of Grant’s romantic comedy heroes. Hitch undermines and exploits Grant for the fourth and final time here as a guy we love until we stop for a second to catch our breath and take stock of the myriad ways in which we’ve been bribed, glad-handed, misled, and led-on.

Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant (2009)

October 23, 20092000s, 2009, Action, Adventure, Authors: Ian Pugh, Fantasy, Teen, Theatrical, Thriller, Vampire

**/****
starring John C. Reilly, Ken Watanabe, Josh Hutcherson, Salma Hayek
screenplay by Paul Weitz and Brian Helgeland, based on the “Cirque du Freak” series of books by Darren Shan
directed by Paul Weitz

by Ian Pugh Maybe it’s a cop-out to dismiss Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant (hereafter The Vampire’s Assistant) with that banal X-meets-Y idiom (“Twilight collides with The Golden Compass!”), but what other choice does one have? Three weeks before little brother Chris continues the Twilight saga, Paul Weitz gets the ball rolling on another vampire property based on another popular series of novels for young adults–and getting the ball rolling is more or less all he does. It’s a handy parallel to Chris’s own The Golden Compass in the sense that you’re expected to immerse yourself in a fantasy world where no one does anything of particular note and nothing is accomplished. People are bitten, people are transformed, and the fulfilment of legends is foretold–but when the credits roll, can you say you’ve actually seen anything? In its own laborious foundation-laying, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone still managed a dreaded brush with Voldemort; what does The Vampire’s Assistant have to offer? Willem Dafoe and Ken Watanabe under pounds of latex–made up to look like Vincent Price and Incredible Hulk nemesis The Leader, respectively–standing around, making bold pronouncements with the implied message that they’ll have more to do if the powers-that-be greenlight the next instalment.

Zombieland (2009)

October 1, 20092000s, 2009, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Horror, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Zombie

½*/****
starring Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin
screenplay by Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick
directed by Ruben Fleischer

by Walter Chaw Bad by every measurable, objective standard, Ruben Fleischer’s Zombieland is a shining, sterling example of what happens when a bunch of idiots get together with their asshole high-concept and proceed to make an abominable hash of it. It’s a conversation halfwits have: what would happen if you married the teen romance with the zombie flick? The problem being that Fleischer and writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick don’t have much of a grasp on what it is about teen romances and zombie flicks that are interesting in the first place. It’s the right choice, casting the poor man’s Michael Cera, Jesse Eisenberg, in his second “-land” movie of the year (after the fantastic coming-of-age flick Adventureland); it’s entirely the wrong choice to have Eisenberg provide film-long voiceover narration that takes the piss–without the benefit of wit or trenchant observation–out of zombie flicks before dropping him in the middle of that old familiar wistful love intrigue. The object of his desire is a fellow survivor of an apocalyptic zombie plague, Wichita (Emma Stone, deee-lish), who is travelling with little sis Little Rock (Abigail Breslin). Ohio (Eisenberg), meanwhile, has hooked up with Woody Harrelson’s redneck-with-a-heart-of-gold Tallahassee–yes, if these characters are actually named after the places from which they hail, they have some ‘splainin’ to do. Our four ragamuffin protags proceed through the long middle of the movie with no zombies in sight, alone with reams of smug, moronic, self-satisfied dialogue that has as the basis of every punchline how much of a virgin pussy is Ohio, and how much of an inbred thug is Tallahassee.

The Dark Crystal (1982) [Superbit] + [25th Anniversary Edition] – DVDs|Blu-ray Disc

September 20, 20091980s, 2009, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Muppets, UK

***/****
Superbit DVD – Image B Sound C+
Anniversary DVD – Image A Sound B+ Extras A
BD – Image B+ Sound B+ Extras A
screenplay by David Odell
directed by Jim Henson and Frank Oz

by Bill Chambers When Jim Henson passed away in 1990, he left behind a diverse legion of fans and a company whose ultimate success, it now seems, hinged on his input. Jim Henson Productions and The Creature Shop are still thriving financially, but as the past few Muppet films (or that silly-looking computer-generated monkey from Lost In Space) demonstrate, the thrill and genius are gone. I’m positive that The Dark Crystal made today by Henson’s successors would not provoke from an audience of kids five to fifty the same spellbound response the 1982 original does. Which is not to say there isn’t room for improvement.

TIFF ’09: The Hole

September 13, 20092000s, 2009, Adventure, Family, Film Festivals, Horror, TIFF

**/****
starring Chris Massoglia, Haley Bennett, Nathan Gamble, Teri Polo
screenplay by Mark L. Smith
directed by Joe Dante

by Bill Chambers At the outset, it worried me that The Hole (no relation to any of the films bearing that title in the past), the great Joe Dante’s return to the big screen, has little to no marquee value. Silly, I know: It’s not like Gremlins‘ Zach Galligan was or is a household name–and besides, this is one of Dante’s kid-oriented pictures, which are never star-driven. Still, to go from “and Steve Martin” to “and Teri Polo” in six short years is pretty humbling; Dante long ago paid his dues in B-movies and, however happy he might be to get away from studio interference/oppression, I’m sad to see him back there–not just because he hardly deserves such a Wellesian fate, but also because he’s a director whose imagination grew in proportion to his funding, and he seems no longer inspired but instead stupefied by a shoestring budget. At least where his feature work is concerned.

9 (2009)

September 9, 20092000s, 2009, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Drama, Luxembourg, Mystery, Russia, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

**/****
screenplay by Pamela Pettler
directed by Shane Acker

by Walter Chaw There’s something missing from Shane Acker’s 9, and I’m having a hard time putting my finger on it. I think it’s that for as much as I like my nihilism, there’s a flavour to this year’s variety of Apocalypse that suggests to me the only thing left to win is the Wasteland. There’s no moral stake in scrambling for scraps, just this Pyrrhic duty to compete, lust fast-cooling on the proverbial sheets, damp and rumpled as they are from a lot of impotent thrusting. So 9 exists in an Industrial Revolution Steamboy alternate universe, ended when an evil fascist dictator creates, with the help of a scientist (Alan Oppenheimer–weird, non?), a sentient machine capable of building other machines to do its bidding. Imagined as a weapon of peace, no surprise that it turns on Man and apparently kills all living creatures, blots out the sun, and spends its time hunting down little burlap rag dolls animated with the scientist’s–wait for it–soul. It’s the second Terminator film of the summer, in other words, as well as the second to mention the idea of horcruxes after Harry Potter 6. Accordingly, it’s a pretty empty, if visually startling, picture. Based on a celebrated, Oscar-nominated short, 9 hasn’t made the transition to feature-length with much of an emotional, or intellectual, payload to justify its extended runtime. The best comparison is to Ralph Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings, alas: the seed of something left fallow.

Fire and Ice (1983) [2-Disc Limited Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

August 31, 20091980s, 2000s, 2009, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blu-ray Disc, Blue Underground, Documentary, DVD, Fantasy

FIRE AND ICE
**½/****
DVD – Image A+ Sound A (DD)/A+ (DTS) Extras B+
BD – Image A Sound A Extras B
screenplay by Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway
directed by Ralph Bakshi

FRAZETTA: PAINTING WITH FIRE (2003)
*½/****
directed by Lance Laspina

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There’s something poignant about the barbarian fantasy that makes it hard to dismiss. Though I long ago abandoned the adolescent nerd’s love of sword-handling macho men and their quivering female conquests, I still find the genre’s tangled web of sexual denials endlessly fascinating–and highly incriminating to any boy who leafed through his “Dungeons & Dragons” manuals with less than pure thoughts on his mind. Very obviously, the whole thing revolves around sex–the sensual idea of standing nearly naked and pulsing with fury while the object of your desire writhes at your feet. But there’s a sense in which it can’t admit this–it has to drag in a mythological sturm-und-drang in order to justify itself as drama, when in fact it just wants to touch itself. And the sad phenomenon of talking about something without talking about it is strangely moving.

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

August 21, 2009****/****, 2000s, 2009, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Quentin Tarantino, Drama, Germany, Theatrical, War

****/****
starring Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Michael Fassbender, Mélanie Laurent
written and directed by Quentin Tarantino

by Walter Chaw There are two stars in Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino and Christoph Waltz), the one to be expected, the other a shoo-in for Oscar consideration in what’s easily the most mesmerizing, commanding performance I’ve seen in any film this year. The opening sequence, in which Waltz’s SS Col. Hans Landa interrogates a French dairy farmer as to the whereabouts of a Jewish family that’s gone missing, is, how to say this, perfect, but unlike the other perfect sequences of 2009 (the prologue of Up, the main titles of Watchmen), Inglourious Basterds matches this exceptional moment with another as Landa has a little confection with a rare survivor of his attentions, Shosanna (a stunning Mélanie Laurent); then another as German actress Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) does her best to cover for her three suspicious pals in an underground speakeasy; then another with Landa again as he asks von Hammersmark to put her foot in his lap. At first glance two separate films that only fit together roughly, if at all, it becomes clear during Inglourious Basterds‘ final chapter, as the ghostly image of a beautiful woman cackles in the smoke above a burning auditorium (“This is the face of Jewish vengeance!”), that this is Tarantino no longer making something new and strange out of his obsessive movie-love, but something dangerous and risky about the ethics of vengeance and the shifting ground beneath moral quagmires we thought we’d put to bed. What better conflict than the last popular war to stage a conversation about whether or not the only reason the winners weren’t held accountable for their atrocities is that they were the winners.

Sunshine Cleaning (2009); The Last House on the Left (2009); Race to Witch Mountain (2009)|Race to Witch Mountain – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

August 2, 20092000s, 2009, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Crime, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Horror, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller, UK, Wes Craven

SUNSHINE CLEANING
**½/****
starring Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Alan Arkin, Jason Spevack
screenplay by Megan Holley
directed by Christine Jeffs

THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT
**½/****
starring Garret Dillahunt, Sara Paxton, Monica Potter, Tony Goldwyn
screenplay by Adam Alleca and Carl Ellsworth, based on the motion picture written and directed by Wes Craven
directed by Dennis Iliadis

RACE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN
*½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras C
starring Dwayne Johnson, AnnaSophia Robb, Carla Gugino, Ciarán Hinds
screenplay by Matt Lopez and Mark Bomback, based on the book Escape to Witch Mountain by Alexander Key
directed by Andy Fickman

by Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Norah (Emily Blunt) is a sort of overripe Juno MacGuff: older but no wiser, quick-witted but shiftless. As she sticks her hand underneath a railroad track, pulling it out just before a train passes, the question is clear: why is she here, doing something so unbelievably stupid, when she should be out trying to get a life? Turns out this game of chicken reminds her of the day she and her sister Rose (Amy Adams) discovered that their mother committed suicide. Christine Jeffs’s Sunshine Cleaning feels like a response to a recent spate of smarmy little indie films in the sense that it bothers to explore the self-aware idiosyncrasies typically taken for granted, and it comes to the startling conclusion that perhaps these “personality quirks” aren’t the building blocks of individualism, but rather signposts for unresolved trauma and budding mental illness. (Given how contradictory this film is to the Little Miss Sunshine mentality (and Alan Arkin’s presence makes the comparison inevitable), can we assume that its title is a double entendre?) You may laugh when Rose’s son Oscar (Jason Spevack) is kicked out of school for licking his teacher’s leg, or when her father Joe (Arkin) hustles unsuspecting business owners with one get-rich-quick scheme after another, yet the lingering question is whether or not they’d engage in “funny” behaviour if not for their inherited anguish. “It’s tough raising a kid by yourself, huh?” Joe tells Rose after she asks him to babysit at an inconvenient time. “Try two.” The attempt to mine humour from these tragic aftermaths doesn’t make Sunshine Cleaning a morbid film, exactly–but it definitely makes for a haunted one.

G-Force (2009)

July 23, 20092009, Action, Adventure, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Disney, Family, Nicolas Cage, Sci-Fi, Theatrical

**/****
starring Bill Nighy, Will Arnett, Zach Galifianakis, Kelli Garner
screenplay by The Wibberleys and Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio and Tim Firth
directed by Hoyt Yeatman

by Ian Pugh It’s no small wonder, I suppose, that Disney’s 3-D contraption G-Force isn’t nearly as bad as it could–and by all rights should–be. Certainly, there are people at the Mouse House still convinced that an overload of genre clichés (here the conventions of the spy movie) are made instantly clever when applied to talking, farting animals (here guinea pigs), and that the company’s morality factory hasn’t already exhausted the virtues of makeshift families and believing in yourself. But encoded in the formula this time around is an odd, unspoken thesis about facing the hitherto-ignored consequences of cruelty towards those who can’t defend themselves. Most intriguing to that end, the big-name actors roped into lending their voices to this mess are appropriately cast, their live-action personae transferred to a sticky CGI concoction of animal nature and human spite. Steve Buscemi cuts loose as an insane, sadistic hamster (his paranoid tendencies–he jealously guards his territory while mumbling to himself–born of “the psych ward at UCLA”), for instance, while Nicolas Cage, as an orphaned, star-nosed mole named “Speckles,” improbably gives his best performance in years. Utilizing his weirdo inflections from Peggy Sue Got Married, Cage manages to channel his familiar space-case into an unlikely outlet and pump it with quiet desperation–dare I say pathos–without even the smallest hint of the self-parody that’s plagued him of late. More than what the film deserves? Most definitely, although the high points of G-Force suggest that, at some stage of production, in some alternate universe, it may have actually deserved it.

The Ruins (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

July 22, 20092000s, 2008, 2009, Adventure, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Germany, Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller

***/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras A
starring Jonathan Tucker, Jena Malone, Shawn Ashmore, Laura Ramsey
screenplay by Scott Smith, based on his novel
directed by Carter Smith

by Walter Chaw Based on a novel by the guy who wrote A Simple Plan and directed by first-timer Carter Smith, The Ruins was lost in the shuffle of a seeming barrage of beautiful-tourists-getting-slaughtered splatter flicks, which may prove to be one of the many genre legacies of the ugly-American, difference-abhorrent Bush Jr. administration. (Not to mention that the flick could easily be read as an eco-horror picture. Lots of legacies, that W., all of them fertile for the horror genre.) What distinguishes it from the Hostels and the Turistas‘ and Club Dreads is a seriousness in its execution and a feeling that there’s nothing happening in the film that is a result of stupidity or even caprice–that the gauntlet our gorgeous heroes go through is only the best example of the futility of our evolution since The Blair Witch Project. It’s a fable of that Sophoclean idea that knowledge brings no profit to the wise, and though it might be a reach, it feels in this time and place like a story about how knowing that we’re going to get blown up by an angry young man over a large body of water doesn’t do a thing to prevent it from occurring. It’s a film that talks about hopelessness and, like in a powerful moment from Marcus Nispel’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the youth of its cast suddenly bespeaks a squeezing-off of potential rather than just tits-and-ass exploitation. Closer to the point, the titillation you feel during the prologue of our cast bathing on a Mexican beach before embarking on their bloody, intimate deaths is brutally punished. The destruction of beauty in The Ruins (the title finally makes sense) becomes allegory for a collective fear of suffering: just as porn works on some level as a fantasy of “if she’ll do that, she’ll do me,” The Ruins works on the level of, If it could happen to these kids, smart and beautiful, then it sure as shit is going to happen to me.

Chick Flick Politick – DVDs + Blu-ray Disc

July 12, 20092000s, 2009, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Musical, Romance, ZERO STARS

BRIDE WARS (2009)
ZERO STARS/**** Image N/A Sound C Extras F
starring Kate Hudson, Anne Hathaway, Kristen Johnston, Candice Bergen
screenplay by Greg DePaul and Casey Wilson & June Diane Raphael
directed by Gary Winick

CATCH AND RELEASE (2007)
ZERO STARS/**** Image B Sound B Extras C
starring Jennifer Garner, Timothy Olyphant, Kevin Smith, Juliette Lewis
written and directed by Susannah Grant

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS (2008)
[JACKPOT EDITION]
***/**** Image N/A Sound B Extras B+
starring Cameron Diaz, Ashton Kutcher, Rob Corddry, Dennis Miller
screenplay by Dana Fox
directed by Tom Vaughan

27 DRESSES (2008)
[WIDESCREEN EDITION]
**/**** Image N/A Sound B Extras B+
starring Katherine Heigl, James Marsden, Malin Akerman, Edward Burns
screenplay by Aline Brosh McKenna
directed by Anne Fletcher

ENCHANTED (2007)
**/**** Image A Sound A Extras D
starring Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey, James Marsden, Susan Sarandon
screenplay by Bill Kelly
directed by Kevin Lima

by Walter Chaw I’m not kidding: Bride Wars is reptilian, hateful stuff, biologically engineered to disrespect–with maximum efficiency–the precise demographic to which it targets itself. It’s like an antibody to the middle-class, medium-attractive girl by virtue of encouraging her to associate herself with upper-middle-class, gorgeous avatars and, through that agency, act in ways completely hostile towards common sense and decency. It’s an epidemic of bad taste: there’s no other way to read the suggestion that size-zero Kate Hudson is a fat, disgusting swine for gaining five pounds pounding chocolate and cookies for a couple of weeks, is there? What’s harder to explain is a scene in the middle where rivals/best friends Liv (Hudson) and Emma (Anne Hathaway) do a slutty dance-off in a strip-club for the crown of “sexiest bride.” Here’s the weird part: one of them actually cares when the other one wins. In the middle of a movie that can only hope to attract women as its audience, here’s a scenario that physically exploits women as opposed to just emotionally or situationally (as is more to be expected). It’s like a soul kiss and a reach-around between Vin Diesel and Paul Walker to cap off a nice street race. But does it have the same chilling effect on its would-be audience, or does it instead feed into the electric lesbian tension that serves as the motor for all these “Sex and the City” knock-offs? Never mind, it’s not important. What is somewhat important is that Gary Winick, the heir-apparent to Garry Marshall’s chick-flick throne, be discouraged from ever directing another movie.

The Deep (1977) – Blu-ray Disc

July 8, 20091970s, 2009, Adventure, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc

**/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras B
starring Robert Shaw, Jacqueline Bisset, Nick Nolte, Eli Wallach
screenplay by Peter Benchley and Tracy Keenan Wynn, based on Benchley’s novel
directed by Peter Yates

by Bryant Frazer English cinematographer Christopher Challis got his start working on newsreels and travelogues before getting a gig with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s production company, The Archers. There, he worked on a team with the great Jack Cardiff before serving as the DP on The Tales of Hoffmann, a lush Technicolor envisioning of the Jacques Offenbach opera. While Challis isn’t among the best-known directors of photography, his technical facility kept him in demand for the next 40 years. He shot films for Stanley Donen, Carol Reed, and Blake Edwards, but there may have been no movie where his sense of colour and light was more critical than on The Deep. Rushed into production at Columbia Pictures to capitalize on the success of Jaws, another seafaring adventure based on a Peter Benchley novel, The Deep has a humdrum story, generally uncommitted performances, and a phoney Moray eel (nicknamed “Percy” on set) that gives the much-maligned mechanical shark “Bruce” from Jaws a run for its money in the department of unconvincing animal attacks. Yet the quality of the imagery is something else.